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The Ailing Planet : The Green Movement's Role
What signs reveal that the earth is a patient in declining health? What is the concept of ‘sustainable development’ and how is it being disturbed?
The earth’s vital signs tell a different story. They give dangerous signals. They reveal that this planet on which we live is no more a pleasant place. It is like a patient in declining health. Lester R. Brown points out that there are four principal biological systems in the world. They are fisheries, forests, grasslands and croplands. They form the foundation of the global economic system. But in most parts of the world human demands on these systems are reaching an unsustainable level. The earth and its environment shows all round degradation and deterioration. We are living on a sick planet.
Sustainable development meets the needs of the present without harming the interests of the future generations. It means that natural wealth and resources will be safeguarded to meet the needs of the future generations. Fisheries and forests shouldn’t be plundered. Human development may be such as may not convert grasslands and croplands into wastelands and deserts.
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1. Locate the following phrases in the text and study their connotation.
1. gripped the imagination of
2. dawned upon
3. ushered in
4. passed into current coin
5. passport of the future
II. The words ‘grip’, ‘dawn’, ‘usher’, ‘coin’, ‘passport’, have a literal as well as figurative meaning. Write pairs of sentences using each word in the literal as well as the figurative sense.
Make posters to highlight the importance of the Green Movement.
Maintain a record of the trees cut down and the parks demolished in your area, or any other act that violates the environment. Write to newspapers reporting on any such acts that disturb you.
What is the Green Movement?
Describe the shift that has come in the viewpoint of man.
What is the holistic and ecological view of the world?
How do the earth’s vital signs ‘reveal a patient in declining health’?
What is the concept of sustainable development?
Who is ‘the world’s most dangerous animal’? Why did they put a mirror inside a cage in the Zoo at Lusaka?
What were the important issues that were raised in the First Brandt Commission on ecology and environment?
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